


On Solid Ground

by atthebarricade



Series: Noises [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Pre and Post Captain America: The Winter Soldier, not really a recovery fic more like a reunion fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 13:04:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2069286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atthebarricade/pseuds/atthebarricade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“'What makes you happy?'<br/>'I don’t know.'<br/>A lie, of course. Steve knew exactly what made him happy, but he had left his happiness behind in a war seventy years ago. He abandoned Bucky, and this was the consequence."</p>
<p>Steve wakes up and learns everyone he loved is dead- including Bucky. He tries his hardest to cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Solid Ground

**Author's Note:**

> Just a reminder that this totally brushes aside Bucky's recovery and focuses for the most part on Steve's grief and then shifts to the Winter Soldier. Hope you enjoy it!

_“What makes you happy?”_

_“I don’t know.”_

A lie, of course. Steve knew exactly what made him happy, but he had left his happiness behind in a war that would kill him but not Steve. He abandoned Bucky, and this was the consequence.

When Steve woke up, Director Nick Fury had decided that Steve needed a three hour long “debriefing” about the events that had transpired while he was in suspended animation. Three hours wasn’t close to cutting it, but Steve had to admit it was easier to relearn the ways of the world with the base knowledge Fury had given him.

A group of psychiatrists and historians sat in on the meeting a week after Steve had woken up and done all the medical exams and psych evals. The began with what Steve cared most about-how the war ended, and who won.

About two hours in, Steve cleared his throat to interrupt the explanation of 80’s pop culture.

“I’m sorry, but I have a few questions about...the war. Some people.”

A few of the agents and historians who spoke about Steve’s war shifted nervously.

“Yes, Captain?” Fury encouraged him.

“What happened to them? The Commandos, and Peggy?” He swallowed. “Bucky?”

A woman spoke up from the opposite end of the table. “Agent Carter survived the war and lived to found S.H.I.E.L.D. with Howard Stark and Colonel Phillips. She’s alive, Captain Rogers.”

He nodded in relief and waited for her to continue. “And Dum Dum? Gabe Jones? Falsworth, the rest of them, what…?”

“The Howling Commandos disbanded and lived to have successful jobs and families, Captain. They’ve all passed by now, old age, but. They made it to the end, at least.”

Steve’s throat tightened and he nodded. “Bucky made it, too?”

Everyone looked away but Fury. “No, Captain Rogers,” he said gravely. “Sergeant Barnes went MIA during a mission to bring down a remaining HYDRA shell and was never recovered. He was presumed dead a year and a half or so after you brought the plane down.”

And really, it was ridiculous how much this hurt Steve, how it knocked the wind out of him and left him feeling like he had even less of a place in this world than before. He was a man out of time and a man without a home.

“We’re sorry, Captain Rogers,” the woman who had mentioned Peggy said grimly. “He was captured by HYDRA a couple of months after your plane went down. He was declared dead in ‘46.”

Steve sat back in his chair, absorbing all of this. The Commandos, all dead. Peggy, in her nineties, with a husband, children, _grandchildren_ \--Steve was glad that she had found happiness in the end. She wouldn’t have found it with him.

He refused to think about Bucky. Bucky wouldn’t have been captured if Steve was there, or if he was, Steve would rescue him. He would stop at nothing.

The briefing drew to a close and a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents escorted him to his new apartment and told him that they would be in contact very, very soon. Steve’s polite expression dropped the minute he was alone he sank to his knees on the too-soft carpet. He buried his face in his hands and sat silently, waves of emotion crashing down on him.

He left him, and now Bucky was _dead_.

*************

Steve woke up trembling, Bucky’s name on his lips. He woke up like this often--no matter how well he adapted to the 21st century, no matter how modern he dressed or cut his hair, no matter how quickly he caught up on pop culture, he couldn’t let go of the boy back in 1945.

Steve went to visit Peggy one day, holding her frail hands and pretending that every shuddering breath she took after one of her coughing fits didn’t cut at his heart.

They reminisced about the war for a while, and Peggy told him all about her life after it. She mentioned a niece who also worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. and he made a mental note to ask around about her.

“Steve,” she said suddenly, cutting off his rambling about his new team. “He loved you. It ruined him, when you left. I think being captured was a relief for him, a way for it to end.” Steve’s hands tightened on hers without thinking, but she didn’t wince. “It’s true. But--but you should know, the day before he was sent out on his last mission, he said to me, ‘I’m proud of him. It’s how he would have wanted to go.’”

His throat tightened, and he fought the swell of tears in his eyes.

“I know you, Steve,” Peggy continued. “I see the guilt in your eyes. You’ve always tried so hard to hide it, and I imagine that it’s only gotten harder for you. So I’m telling you that it wasn’t your fault, and as long as you still have that fit body you keep doing what you think is right. It’s what he would have wanted- what they all would have wanted.”

Steve took a deep breath and nodded. “Besides, someone’s gotta uphold your legacy, right, Pegs?”

She gave him an unimpressed look. “My legacy will live on just fine without your help, Steven Grant Rogers.”

They both laughed, and Steve began to feel like it would all be okay.

*************

He received a text from Bruce one day asking him if he’d like to join the gang at Stark’s tower for a movie night, if he wasn’t busy. Steve snorted at that (there was a special on TV titled “Captain America & His Commandos” that he was watching for a third time) and told him he’d be over right away.

Of course when he got there, Tony gleefully informed him that’s exactly what they were watching, and “C’mon Cap, teammates don’t let teammates watch inaccurate documentaries about themselves alone.”

He kept up a sarcastic commentary throughout the whole thing, which kept his new friends laughing and him from feeling the ache of his lost old ones. They ordered Indian food and Steve stayed overnight in the suite that Tony had built just for him after the Battle of New York. As he lay in the bed (with Captain America sheets, fuck you Tony) he wondered if he wasn’t the only lonely one in the group. In fact, Steve wondered if any of them weren’t desperately lonely. The feeling of belonging that had begun with Peggy’s words solidified a little, and he didn’t have any nightmares that night.

*************

Sam Wilson was the kind of guy who you could tell anything and keep from him nothing. He’d met the guy once for a total of three minutes, but Steve instinctively knew that Sam’s place would be safest for him and Natasha. Once they were cleaned up and seated and Sam’s table, Natasha began to subtly scan the room and assess Sam. Steve remained quiet and picked at his eggs until Natasha leaned back a bit in her chair, obviously satisfied at this new safehouse. The last of Steve’s doubt faded away and the three of them made a plan to get the wings back and find Jasper Sitwell. With each funny jibe Sam made while they talked, the more Steve thought how well he’d fit in with the rest of them. A smile played at his lips at that, and Natasha subtly raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything. They helped with the dishes before setting out on their mission. Sam was behind them locking the door and Natasha bumped shoulders with Steve.

“Quit with the googly eyes, Rogers,” she teased.

“I could say the same thing to you, Romanoff.”

Her lips quirked into a smile. “I think both our hearts already belong to someone else, though,” she said casually. “Am I right?”

Steve said nothing, just smiled a little and slid into the passenger seat. Sam got behind the wheel and turned on the radio, either not picking up or ignoring Steve’s sudden tension.

*************

When the Winter Soldier’s mask slipped off and revealed Bucky, Steve felt like he had completely toppled off the sense of stability he had been building over two years.

_He’s alive, how is he alive, they told me he was dead…_

Later, when they’re fighting on the bridge, Steve wracks his mind desperately for something to say and bring Bucky back to himself. Somehow he didn’t think calling the Winter Soldier a jerk would help his situation at all.

“You’re my friend,” he reminded him desperately, bones aching and face bleeding.

“You’re my mission,” the Soldier snarled back, but there was something in his eyes that gave Steve hope. It wasn’t a sudden look of affection or recognition or anything remotely positive, but it was anger and confusion. The Winter Soldier wasn’t programmed to be upset, so the disappearance of the dead-eyed kept Steve clinging to consciousness. He was getting through to him.

“Then finish it,” he croaked. The words came easily to him. “‘Cause I’m with you till the end of the line.”

The arm was pulled back but hesitated, and a wild look crossed Bucky’s face. The helicarrier broke beneath Steve and he was sent plunging down into the Potomac, heartbroken at the thought that they were being separated again without Steve telling Bucky that he loved him.

_Not that it would mean a damn thing to him anyway_ , he reminded himself before hitting the water.

*************

A month after the helicarrier incident, Steve realized that as jarring as Bucky’s reappearance was, it hadn’t knocked Steve off his newly built stability. Instead he was sort of...clinging on with one hand, but there were people in his life that would help him back on. The second time he woke up in the hospital, it was Natasha next to him instead of Sam. The second she noticed he was awake (or knowing Natasha, the second she decided he was alert enough to interact with) she hugged him tightly. It was at an awkward angle and Steve was still a little bit sore, but it was comforting all the same and Steve was immensely grateful.

He moved into the Avengers Tower a week before he and Sam planned to leave and start looking for Bucky. Sam stayed in a guest room, but Tony assured him that he’d have a floor built for Sam by the time they got back. Sam was obviously pleased as punch about this, but he still made Tony promise not to hang up framed photos of birds anywhere in his rooms. Stark muttered something about Barton being a snitch and slouched away.

The morning their flight took off, Steve discovered a note stuck to his fridge.

**Good luck.**

**-N**

Steve smiled and slipped it into his bag.

Sam was waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the Tower, a bag of fresh bagels clutched in one hand. Steve groaned when he saw and immediately unwrapped his, biting into it with relish.

“Good morning to you too, Rogers,” Sam commented drily. Steve rolled his eyes and got into the car Tony lent them as it pulled up.

“You ready for the wild goose chase your pal’s gonna bring us on?” he asked, and Steve took a deep breath.

“Yeah, I am,” he said truthfully. He opened his mouth to say more, but thought better of it it and closed it. Sam seemed to understand and clasped his shoulder silently.

Their first stop was London, where Natasha had relayed that a few citizens were reporting that a suspicious character was going around pickpocketing. The descriptions matched Bucky, and though Sam had expressed doubt that he’d be so easy to find, it was worth a shot (and all they had).

When they got there, they searched several dozen alleyways in the sketchiest parts of the city until nightfall. There wasn’t a sign of him anywhere, and Steve fell into bed that night feeling deflated. No one had even reported seeing him.

They spent the next day in a similar fashion before Steve decided that if he had even been there in the first place, Bucky had obviously moved on. Next they went to the neighboring capital cities--Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Madrid, anywhere there were reports of heightened criminal activity. Steve for one didn’t want to think that Bucky might be causing any of these...spikes, but he knew it was logical and the only guide they had. They always stayed at least two days and never spent more than a week, when Sam asked if there was any other pattern to what they were doing or just moving around and hoping for the best.

“What do you think?” Steve said. “There hasn’t been a single word on him. Our best bet is to keep hitting the well-populated areas until we get a lead.”

Sam shrugged and gave Steve a grin. “I’m cool with that. Always to do some traveling after I got out of the service, anyway.”

Weeks passed, then months. Steve was beginning to lose hope that they’d find Bucky at all. Secretly at night he imagined finding Bucky back in the clutches of HYDRA, all memories of Steve that had been trickling back ripped away from him again. After his seventy year long snooze, Steve hadn’t had the best sleeping habits, but now they were almost nonexistent. No matter what techniques he used, he was plagued by images of his friend starving or tortured all alone in the world. Sam must have noticed this new distance Steve was putting between them, but he didn’t comment on it. Steve was grateful. The last thing he needed was to be encouraged to actually talk about his issues.

They were spending the night in a small hotel in Brussels when Steve’s phone rang. The screen informed him that the number was unknown, something that Steve had never seen before. JARVIS usually was able to trace all calls he received instantly.

“Hello?” he said cautiously.

There was an intake of breath on the other end and then someone cleared their throat.

“Hi.”

Steve’s heart skipped a beat and he sat up in his bed.

“Bucky?” he said incredulously.

“Uh, yeah. I’m in your hotel. I...overheard someone complaining about their sister always showing up unannounced at their house and I thought I should call before I came to see you. So I didn’t, er, startle you. Or interrupt. Or something.”

Steve was silent for a moment, taking this all in. Bucky cleared his throat again and Steve let out a nearly hysterical laugh.

“Bucky,” he said. “I’m literally here because of you. I’ve been searching for you for like two months. Of course you wouldn’t be _interrupting_.”

Bucky took a few seconds to absorb that before finally replying, “Alright.” The call disconnected.

Ten seconds later, the window behind Steve slid open and Bucky silently slipped in. Steve whipped around and fought the urge to throw himself at his best friend, chest swelling in relief. He wasn’t looking his best, but he had more color than he did when Steve last saw him. Compared to how he’d pictured Bucky’s in his dreams, the man was at the height of health.

“Hi,” Steve said eloquently. Hardly the appropriate thing to say in this situation, but what the hell _was_ appropriate?

“Hi,” Bucky repeated.

“It’s good to see you.”

“Yeah. You, too.”

“How...how are you doing?” He winced. Jesus, Steve.

Bucky coughed, shifting awkwardly. “Not as bad as I could be. I’m...better. Getting better all the while.”

“So you remember? Or you’re remembering?”

Bucky nodded, a quick bob of his head. “Yeah, I’m remembering a lot and at a fast pace. That’s why they wiped me so often- I fought the programming too hard.” He looked up at Steve to gauge his reaction to this. “It’s been a lot of recent stuff, the...missions I had, but if I remember something from... before HYDRA it’s of you.” He looked sheepish at this and Steve threw precaution to the wind, stepping forward and wrapping Bucky in his arms.

“Buck,” Steve said.

“Punk,” Bucky whispered. He said it without hesitation, but there was a note of uncertainty in his voice. Steve’s arms tightened.

“Jerk.”

“Steve,” Bucky said desperately. “There’s a lot wrong with me. There’s stuff I haven’t remembered, the stuff that I...tucked away, that I didn’t want to face. I’m not stable. Not that you give a shit about that, I could probably come in here trying to stab you and you’d still offer to let me sleep on your couch, but. It’s gonna be a process.”

Steve looked at him silently, observing the conflicting emotions on Bucky’s face.

“I know,” he finally said. “We’re both messed up. But we’ve got each other. All right?”

“Alright,” Bucky repeated.

“But you can start using doors when we go places.”

“If you insist.”

Steve barked a laugh at that and Bucky smiled for the first time. God, how long had it been since Steve laid eyes on that smile?

“We’ll be okay, you and me,” Steve promised.

“Of course we are,” Bucky replied. “You’re too goddamn stubborn for anything else to happen.”

They stayed silent for a few moments before Steve filled the quiet. “Gotta be honest, I thought the reunion thing would be a lot more dramatic.”

“Oh, yeah?” Bucky raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“We’d find you in a back alley in some shady city and I’d take off after you. We’d lose Sam and you’d lead me into some shady alley and-”

“Steve, I’m gonna stop you right there,” Bucky interrupted. “Firstly because there was no way in hell you two were ever gonna find me, ‘cause your search method sucked and also I’m the Winter Soldier, no one finds me unless I want them to. I’ve been trailing you guys this whole time. Secondly, you pictured us ending up in a dark alley somewhere and I dunno if this is PG or not.”

Steve snorted and rolled his eyes, disguising his joy at how normal Bucky sounded. It was achingly familiar. “Don’t act like--”

Outside, a man shouted something unintelligible and Steve stiffened. Two seconds later, a gunshot rang out, the noise especially loud with the open window. Instantly Steve was thrown on the floor behind the bed, somehow halfway underneath it. He immediately pushed himself up and saw Bucky slamming the window shut and locking it, a knife in each hand. He turned to Steve and crossed the room, Steve’s body instantly tensing for a fight. Instead he was pushed back down and Bucky crouched over him in a fighting stance, knives at the ready. Where the hell was he even hiding those? Steve hadn’t noticed any bulges in his clothing.

“Bucky,” Steve said softly. “Hey Bucky, it’s okay.”

“Steve, a gun was just fired in the street ten feet away from us five minutes after I got back in contact with you. If you think for a fucking second that I’m going to just let you get up and schmuck around the room, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“I won’t _schmuck_ around, I’ll be careful-”

“Steve, please. I-- I need to make sure that you’re….I gotta--” he cut off, looking frustrated. “I need to keep you safe. There’s not a lot that’s the same about how I work on the inside, anymore, but that’s still there. So please. Let me have this.”

Steve nodded slowly at this, opening his mouth to reply when someone knocked on the door. Bucky’s head swiveled and his grip on the knives tightened.

“Hey, Steve, you alright? I heard the gunshot, and I just wanted to check on you.”

“I’m fine, Sam, thanks,” Steve called back.

The other man paused. “You wanna open the door or what?”

“It’s Sam, Buck. We can trust him.”

Bucky looked down at him and laughed dryly, knives disappearing just as quickly as he had pulled them out. “I told you I’m fucked up.” He stepped away from Steve and pulled the door open, revealing a worried Sam. The man in question took in the scene in front of him-Bucky with a wild, dangerous look in his eyes and Steve laying on the ground a foot away. Though he was unarmed and didn’t even has his wings, it was obvious he was preparing for a fight.

“Sam, hey, we’re alright,” Steve said. “Bucky dropped by but then the gunshot made us both a little nervous but we’re alright. We’re gonna be fine.”

“Jesus,” Sam said. “Alright. Bucky, hi, nice to see you. Um. What the hell happened?”

*************

Recovery was never easy, especially for someone as traumatized as Bucky. But he was right--Steve was stubborn as hell, and had copious amounts of devotion to one Bucky Barnes. By the end of their second month back together, Bucky was fairly certain he had nearly all of his memories back, and the nightmares were happening once nightly instead of two or three times. Their first night in the tower had ended with Bucky jerking awake five times total, and finally Steve suggested Bucky just stay with him in Steve’s bed. He accepted cautiously and they’d kept the arrangement every night after.

The Avengers accepted Bucky easily into their little group, making room for him on their now weekly movie nights and putting an extra two Poptarts in the toaster each morning (Bucky liked strawberry, which made Thor roar in approval and was probably at least a quarter of the reason Thor established friendship so easily with Bucky).

They hadn’t brought him on a mission yet, and Bucky hadn’t asked.

“Just cause I haven’t snapped yet doesn’t mean something’s never gonna happen,” he said to Steve in bed one night. “I can’t take that risk. You know that.”

Steve assured him that he understood, and if Bucky had an extra nightmare that night that ended with him screaming Steve’s name, Steve didn’t bring it up.

On a slow afternoon in late October, four months since Bucky had come to see Steve in his hotel room, Bucky looked up.

“Steve,” he said seriously.

Steve met his gaze and shut his sketchbook gently. “Yeah, Buck?”

“When you died, and we were talking--” He cut himself off, Adam’s apple bobbing. Steve’s heart began to fill with dread. They had never discussed that before. In fact, Steve wasn’t sure how he even knew that Steve had survived the crash. He must have been given a brief history on Steve, or researched it somewhere. Either way, it must have been terribly confusing to have to remember someone you thought was dead.

“Yeah?” Steve encouraged.

“I told you that I loved you,” Bucky began, “and you didn’t get to finish what you were saying.” They made eye contact again.

And God, Steve’s entire life from the moment the radio connection cut out and he left behind 1945 had been leading up to this- the words had always been on his tongue, but no one had been there to receive them. But for some reason they had been brought back together, and Steve could finally rectify the moment that had been haunting him for seventy years.

“No, I didn’t,” Steve confirmed. “The radio cut out.”

Bucky gave him a look and Steve blushed. Obviously, Steve. Well done.

Bucky got to his feet and crossed the room, scanning Steve’s face as he did so. When he reached the loveseat that Steve was perched on, he sank to his knees in front of him and covered both of Steve’s hands with his cybernetic left one.

“Steve,” he whispered, and suddenly Steve could hear the whine of engines and feel the approaching cold. “Steve, pal, I love you.”

“Aw, Buck,” Steve recited. “You know that I’ve always loved you too.”

Their lips met and for the first time in a long time Steve knew that he was solidly on two feet. He had made a home for himself in this new century, finally.

When they parted, Bucky laughed quietly.

“What?” Steve asked, chuckling too. “Long time coming?”

Bucky shook his head. “It’s just...there’s always been this noise in my head, this scratchy noise like static. I figured it was just a part of the programming, but it just stopped.”

“You had a constant noise in your head and you never told anyone?” Steve demanded.

“Ssh,” Bucky replied, kissing Steve again. He refused to let Steve pull away, pulling himself on to the couch on top of Steve. “It never seemed to come up.”

“It didn’t have to _come up_ , why didn’t-”

“Shut up and kiss me, Rogers.”

The twenty-first century was beginning to feel like home.

 

 


End file.
